Colony, 2010
Archival Pigment PrintsPlease click on thumbnail images below left for full image, and click on image below right for larger view.

The series of prints, Colony, pairs altered portraits of 19th century Westerners with altered Orientalist postcards taken and traded by Westerners in the Colonial era. The themes of sensuality, concealment, and exposure, already implicit in Victorian and Orientalist imagery, are taken here to an absurd degree. The comparisons play with assumptions regarding the colonizer and subject. Here, the insects are the invaders, modestly cloaking the body of “Une Belle Morocain”, or burying a Victorian man in the chaotic swarm of his own beard.

Colony: Schmidt (I-II), 2010. Archival Pigment Prints. Each 5"x8"
A note about the technique:
The process involved in making these prints includes digital and manual means.The swarms are created by glueing flies directly onto a print of an antique photograph or postcard. The collage is then scanned, and reprinted. Many of the prints are composed of two prints with different surfaces to mimic Victorian cabinet cards or a page from an antique photo album.